254 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

possible contingency of attack. Tories were transferred from Now York to the care of Gov. Trumbull, of Connecticut, accompanied with paternal requests for their kind treatment. Measures were taken to quench the rising flame of loyalty in Now Jersey; suspected persons in Kings County, on Long Island, were disarmed, and a committee, as we have already seen, was sent by Congress to enforce the suppression of toryism. at every hazard. The public archives were carefully conveyed from New York to the care of Congress, at Philadelphia, the officers’ wives in camp were removed from danger, and the most liberal and tender measures for the protection and relief of women and children in the menaced city were suggested by Washington and promptly carried out by Congress. At New Utrecht, Col. Hand, with his corps of Pennsylvania riflemen, was posted on the hill above the present site of Fort Hamilton, in order to serve as a check to, and to give information of, any landing in that quarter.

The rejection of their overtures seems to have decided the British generals in their action. At dawn on the 22d of August, information was received at the American headquarters from Brig.-Gen. William Livingston, then in camp at Elizabeth, N.J., that Lord Howe had landed a large force at Gravesend Bay, on Long Island, and that 20,000 men had gone to take possession of that island, while 15,000 were to attack Bergen, Elizabethtown Point, and Amboy. These reports, although exaggerated, had a substratum of truth, as was evidenced, at sunrise, by the roar of cannon and dense columns of smoke arising from near the Narrows.1

1 The British fleet, after taking position to cover the landing of the troops, shelled the heights and woods on the Long Island shore, in order to drive out any force which might be there concealed. It was this preliminary bombardment which startled the expectant American army, and which may possibly afford an explanation of the following curious circumstance as related by Judge Furman (MS. Memoranda, viii., p. 396):

“In the month of August, '76, on the second or third day before the landing of the British troops upon Long Island, an apparent cannonading was heard. So very distinct was this cannonading, and so very regular was it and continuous, that all the inhabitants of the island residing between the distance of two miles from the city of New York and about thirty-five miles down the island, were satisfied that the British had landed and attacked the American army. Those residing at the west end of the island immediately commenced moving their families and driving their cattle towards the interior; and in such numbers, that my aunt Tyler, then a young girl, and living at her home in New Lots, nine miles from Brooklyn ferry, tells me she was awakened the next morning by the lowing of cattle, and upon arising, she found the roads blocked up with cows, horses, sheep, &c., which had been driven up during the night to escape the plunder